A white person jumping around, acting crazy - that's what the Chinese want!

It has come! My three week vacation to Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia is tomorrow!! How do you pack for three weeks?? Well hopefully I have not forgotten anything too important and if I have, hopefully Thailand has it as well. It should be a great trip and I'll take notes so I remember everything to put in my blog when I return :)


Jess's friend Connie was in from Hong Kong visiting for the day. Connie went to Jess's undergrad for four years so she knows all about Western food. She has been missing Mexican food so went to the expat area of town and got some dinner. I ate four tacos! It was delicious.


Mangosteen! Today was a day of firsts. My friend, the guard, gave me one of his mangosteens - I had no idea what it was. It's a fruit with a really hard shell and you have to pressure a hole through to split the outside into two. Inside is something that looks like a bulb of garlic but it is mushy and sweet. It was tasty! After I hung out for a bit I went and met up with Jess and Marie. We went and finally got xitous! A xitou is a massage hair wash. A lot of the girls in our program get them all the time but every time Jess and I try to go something happens. So we finally did it. One of Jess's Chinese friend's from church took us to a place she knew and it was very upscale. It was a fun afternoon. I spent most of my time teaching my hair washer new words in English. The only problem is that China doesn't believe in conditioner the way we do, their hair is just naturally not tangled. Not so much with mine...especially since I haven't had a hair cut in 6 months and my hair is insanely long now. When I got put in the chair to get my hair brushed and blow dried, it was a mess and the guy didn't know what to do with it. It was even funnier that his pinky finger nail kept getting caught in my hair as he was blow drying it. (In China it is a sign of wealthy as a man if you have a really long pinky finger nail) But he got through and finally got my hair under control. Overall it was a fun new experience.


I was traveling home on my good ol' 74 when we tried to turn the corner and realized that a car had crashed into a cement truck in front of us. Don't worry, no one got hurt. They don't believe in bad car crashes here in China, I've only ever seen a few incidents and those have all been minor. Well our bus driver decided he was going to try and get around the accident and get through to keep moving on our way. He failed. He pulled up as far as he could go and then realized we were about to crash into a car parked on our right. So then we were stuck...He opened the door and rolled down his window and started shouting at the guys standing outside to help him try and maneuver our way out. My school was in viewing distance so I just hopped out of the open door and walked the rest of the way.


Four months ago, there was nothing here! Since then they built a huge construction site and created a new road, crazy.


The thing I love most about having a desk in the teacher's office is that many days I arrive to find something strange left for me. Usually it is food, but today it was this note. Sure enough, I opened my closet and there was a stack of dry noodles. I didn't actually destroy the note after reading, but I kept it secret :)


This notebook is my life in China and I always have it on me. It has all of my bus stops listed, directions to everywhere I want to go, it has Chinese symbols written in there, random Chinese words to remember, and anything else I deem as needed. Without it, I would be lost.


Jess and I spent the afternoon at Dongmen. The new thing to see was a orange juice stand that for 8 kuai you could watch them literally squeeze out orange juice, put it in a bottle and serve it to you fresh.


Today we went to DaPeng Fortress. It is out in the middle of nowhere LongGang and actually is right up against the sea. This is the location of the first battle of the Opium Wars. The place was built in the 1300s to protect the sea front. Now it is home to a whole community of people living inside the walls. You pay 15 kuai to get in and you get to walk around the streets of the fortress, passing families doing laundry, cooking dinner, playing with their dogs, etc. It was a little weird but I really enjoyed it. Then there is a little restaurant up at the top of one of the entrance gates where you can see over the tops of the roofs.


Game night! Cliff and I went out to Phill's and joined up with Matt, Marie, Ben, John, Lidia, Lisa and Marissa to have a fun filled time with games! One of Phill's Chinese friends, BeiBei, also joined. We played Settlers! It was great, I miss that game. And then we played a celebrity game and Mafia. BeiBei was very confused with Mafia. We ended with a round of King's Cup. Then Cliff and I were off again to join up with some people at the OCT for evening drinks.


Sorry...I had to take a picture of this eventually. At least once a week I walk past a display outside a restaurant with a dog hanging in the window :(


Ok, sorry, this is a ridiculous picture. But I got home and realized that I hadn't taken a picture yet that day. And this was a pretty momentous day so I felt I should log it somehow. Today was the first day that I uttered out loud that I was thinking of staying for another year. Luckily, I also found out today that two of my closest friends are also planning on staying. Yay!


So the last two weeks that I taught I gave Oral English tests to 500 students. This mostly consisted of me standing outside and having each student come out to me one at a time to answer a few questions. Main questions were - How are you? Why? What are you doing for Winter Holiday? Do you like this school? Why? My favorite answers/situations:
How are you? Good. Why are you good? Because I get to see you!
How are you? I am fine. Why are you fine? Because my English teacher told me that if anyone ever asks you how you are you should say 'I am fine'
-I gave almost everyone 10/10. So I had them all write their names (either English or Chinese spelled out) next to their Chinese characters and had their score next to it. One kid came out, wrote his name and automatically put a 9 next to his name. He realized what he had did and then looked all worried that I wasn't going to change the score until I started laughing.

Perfect Moments

Out in Longgang is an art district so we decided to go there for the day since we hadn't been before. We took the new Longgang subway to get there! The place was really cool and there were a number of stalls that the painters were actually working on their master pieces. There were a lot of replicas as well. And it was interesting because you could walk past other stalls and see people painting on big canvases that had paint by numbers on them to replicate a famous painting. I'm not sure if I would consider that art or not...


Cliff, Leah, Andrew and I headed out for Longgang to spend the night at Jess and Marie's. We went out for a Chinese dinner at a place the girls had been before. In typical "American at a Chinese restaurant" style, we got a picture menu and pointed at a few of the items, not quite sure what all we were getting. One of the dishes we were pretty sure was sweet and sour pork. When the waitress came and sat down the food she said the name of the dish. Andrew's eyes widened and he looked around at us and said "I'm pretty sure she just said this was dog". We called the waitress back over and asked her to repeat the name. She was saying "Go something something" and Andrew said Go was dog. We all decided it was a good thing because we all needed to try dog at least once before we leave and if this was it then we could get the experience out of the way. We each had at least one, but there were still a few pieces left over when we finished which would not be the case if it hadn't been dog, because it was actually pretty good. Just to make sure, I wrote down the characters of the dish so we could look it up at home. Everyone was sure it was and we all talked about the fact that we had finally knowingly ate dog. When we got back we got out the dictionary and found that the dish was called Guo Bao Rou. Yea...Gou is dog...not Guo....We ate a "batch of pot cooked meat", probably not dog. So now we have to go out again into the world and eat something we think is dog...


After Hong Kong I had to go back by myself because my contact teacher invited Fuat and I over to see his new apartment and go out to dinner. His apartment was really nice and I was happy for him that he's settling in. He's getting married in a couple weeks so he's all excited about his new living situations. Fuat and I even got to help him hang up his lucky door signs. Every apartment in China has these pretty much. So now we all have luck. The evening was fun and Fuat and I got a good chance to hang out and chat for awhile so that was nice. Two of my students who live in the neighborhood also joined us which was fun.


Happy New Years!!! For the big night, Cliff, Andrew, Jessica, Marie, Ben, Greg and I (the family) headed out for the great city of Hong Kong. We had been told that it was an awesome place to be for New Years and we wanted to be a part of the action. After dealing with some Visa stuff for our upcoming January vacation and checking into our hotel we were ready for the excitement. One of Jessica's college friends, Connie, lives in Hong Kong so she joined us for the evening as well. First we went and grabbed dinner at an Irish pub. It was mouth watering. I had a turkey melt sandwich. One of the few sandwiches I have had in China (the American staple food hasn't quite reached the East yet). Afterward we headed to find the rest of the CTLC partiers. When we reached the meeting point (20 minutes late) no one was around. So we decided to go out to the piers and see if we could find anyone/get a good view of the fireworks. There wasn't anyone there, but we weren't going to let that disappoint us. The boys went on a beer run and the girls went to try and figure out the best vantage point for viewing the show. In the end the boys actually were the ones to find the best spot. We had told them to meet us at one of the piers when they got back which was holding a big party on the top level, but you had to pay 350 HKD to get in. They couldn't find us so two of them went up to the party and asked if they could go in to look for us. The guards let them in and eventually the boys realized we weren't there so came back out again and found us. Well, the top of the pier was by far the best spot for the fireworks so we decided to see if we could all just get past the guards at the party. Sure enough, they let us all in and we promised we wouldn't drink anything. What they didn't know is that we brought all of our own stuff and ended up getting free sodas from the bar. The party was fun, it was good music and mostly foreigners. Our group found a spot and just hunkered in for an hour an a half to wait for the countdown. The moment finally came and the whole bay lit up with fireworks. We were right under the final building of the show and the fireworks started shooting out from the sides of the building! It was a great sight and I had good friends around me, it was perfect. After midnight we tried to find our way back to the rest of CTLC but it was going to take over an hour just to get to the area so instead we hiked it back to the hotel. In the morning we all got up and went to get breakfast at the Flying Pan - a 'to die for' American breakfast place. Again, perfect. We all sat around the table together eating pancakes and bagels, you couldn't ask for more.